IEEE 802.11 based Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) have been deployed in many locations such as homes, schools, hospitals and cafes. WLANs enable users to connect to the internet with great flexibility and at a low-cost. However, due to harmful effects of wireless medium such as walls between transmitters and receivers and the fading of signals, the throughput achieved by clients in a given WLAN may be sub-optimal. Furthermore, a client may experience some level of loss of connection from the access point (AP) to which the client is connected. This is known as the wireless coverage problem which causes distortion in the wireless communication between clients and the APs. Hence, it is important to find efficient and low-cost methods which provide full connectivity in WLANs by extending the range of connectivity between the clients and the APs.
One solution for extending this range, is to increase the transmit power of the transmitting nodes (e.g., the AP(s) and/or the client(s)) in the network. However, this solution is inefficient for two reasons. First reason is that increasing transmit power causes more energy consumption. The second reason is that higher transmit power generates more interference in the network.